Generally, the industry of semiconductor manufacturing involves highly complex techniques for fabricating integrated circuits using semiconductor materials which are layered and patterned onto a substrate, such as silicon. An integrated circuit is typically fabricated from a plurality of reticles or masks. Initially, circuit designers provide circuit pattern data, which describes a particular integrated circuit (IC) design, to a reticle production system, which transforms the pattern data into a plurality of reticles. One emerging type of reticle is an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) reticle that is comprised of a plurality of mostly reflecting layers and a patterned absorber layer.
Due to the large scale of circuit integration and the decreasing size of semiconductor devices, the reticles and fabricated devices have become increasingly sensitive to defects. These defects, if uncorrected, can cause the final device to fail to meet the desired performance due to electrical timing errors. Even worse, such defects can cause the final device to malfunction and adversely affect yield.
It would be beneficial to provide improved test devices, apparatus, and techniques to facilitate inspection of EUV reticles.